Interior with Paintings, 1914

oil on canvas

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David Milne was one of Canada’s pre-eminent modern painters and printmakers. Working at the same time as the Group of Seven, Milne’s work demonstrates a quite different set of concerns from his contemporaries. Interior with Paintings was completed one year after the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show in New York City (in which Milne participated) that introduced American audiences to European Modernism. At the time, Milne was living in Manhattan with his wife, Patsy, who is the subject in this work. The role the subject matter plays in the image is, nonetheless, secondary to concerns about relationships between form and colour. Milne’s decision to use an interior also points to the influence of modern artists, like Henri Matisse, whose own famous interior Red Studio also hung at the Armory Show.